this is the sea where the goddess lives
by vespertines
Summary: "Sadness has the texture of something living." In which Elsie Hughes and Mary Crawley have something of a moment. Post S3 finale, spoilers.


_This is the sea where the goddess lives,_  
_angry, her lover taken away._  
_Don't wear red, don't wear green here,_  
_the people say. Do not swim in the sea._  
_Give her an offering_.  
- "Alone with the Goddess", Linda Gregg

i.

Sadness has the texture of something living. Four haunches and starved, like the cats that used to lurk around the barn doors. Elsie Hughes has felt their shadows arched around every corner, but turned her head to find nothing. The careful patter of a young maid's step, soft as a moth's wing and still three tones too loud; 's long shadow, puffed chest and high chin, black sleeved wings folded still around his side; the spectral darkness of a lady's dress, with the fractured faces of jewels like a splintered noose around their necks – these are all the things she catches in the web of hallways. The sadness persists. Heavy now. Everything smells as though it has rained for days and every bone feels as though it is soaked full of water. She can taste it under her tongue. She suspects every vein is full of it too, all this extra storm cloud and thunder and no lightning to jolt them back to breathing.

When her problems were black-pelted cats, the solutions were easier. When she was a maid, these atmospheres seemed to disappear quicker. You dusted until they were gone. This is different, of course. A daughter of the house died a year ago and former heir after that and it is different, of course it is different. It is different because Lady Mary says it is different – not in words, but in the absence of them. It is different because they have all been bent over her shoulder for months now. Even the Old Dowager. Lady Grantham will come to her with another party, a guest list of entertainers and young men with faces carved from hard lines. Statue men for their statue lady. She never question them. And in the evenings Mr. Carson will give her a glass of something strong and lean over her desk and say, _No, not those flowers. Lady Mary prefers –_or, _Don't you think Lady Mary would prefer it if –_ and she will pretend he has given her something strong enough to swallow all these incessant arrangements.

They want things to be perfect for her, she supposes. She doubts anything will ever be perfect for the Lady again.

She is never in the room when Lady Mary descends the staircase – if she descends at all. But she knows by the way Mr. Carson lingers in her doorway or by the way Lady Grantham smiles the next morning and how her vowels slip. It is a small victory when Lady Mary stays for an hour, a conquest when she speaks or there is the smallest flash of teeth, something that once would have been a smile. They know these things, of course, because all they do is watch her. Their pointed-faced changeling daughter, that's how her sister would have described Lady Mary, Elsie is sure. Anice had believed in fae folk and the like. A changeling swapped not for some sprite, but a spirit. Ghost-faced, then, all the light slipping off from the skin, all the skin wrapped in black silks. In the past months, Lady Mary has become not much more than a shadow. And her room not much more than a crypt.

She has spent the year mapping out these affairs for this spectre. Months, adjusting rotas and herding maids through corridors on what is close enough to impromptu. Lady Mary refuses to have a schedule. Lady Mary refuses, often, to come out of her room. And so the room resists dusting. And so there are complications.

She did not begrudge the widow of these things, not initially. The blood that might have bled for Lady Mary in her heart might have hardened to stone years ago, but she has never been an unreasonable woman. No one deserves such tragedies, certainly no one so young. She had been sympathetic – she is still sympathetic, even now, in that she hasn't said an unkind word on the matter. She has been quiet and she has done her duty and walked quietly around Mr. Carson, made life easier for him when everything else was made difficult.

It's a symptom of the rich, or perhaps a privilege, that they're even capable of mourning this long. When her mam died, there was still work to be done that morning. And so sympathy can only run you so far, because the other Crawleys have learned to prefer purple to black. They've learned to get their duties done, hollow as some may seem. It's not that she has no empathy for her employers, it's just that she cannot get her work done – she cannot move forward.

And if she can't move forward, there's scarce chance that the rest of Downton can.

ii.

"You're asking me for a favour."

"Not a favour," Mr. Carson is swift to interject, slower to meet her eyes. He's standing off to the side, looking at the few rays of light that slide their way into her pantry. He was always at a better height to appreciate them. The light is hitting his face too harshly, she thinks, burrowing itself along the angles. Or perhaps he really is that old, this tired. Still, he cringes at the word – _favour_– because, certainly, he'd hate to be in her debt, think this was a matter of them.

"We're asking you for a kindness." Anna stands on the opposite side of her office, leaning carefully against her door.

Elsie feels her jaw go tense. To make it a matter of kindness is unreasonable. She has no qualms with being called unkind – she's been called worse before – but this is no simple act of charity. They've come to her, she knows, because they are desperate for miracles and even more desperate over where to turn.

"But what would I say? You know I don't know her like you both do. I don't see how I'd be of any help."

"We just thought –" Anna begins because she know Carson won't.

"- And it's not the best timing either, to be honest. There are guests outside. I have work to do – and so do the two of you."

"Anna and I can manage it without any problems."

"Oh, you can, can you?"

"That's not what Mr. Carson meant. What we mean is that you always have a way of making things right – for us, downstairs. And so we just thought, maybe, you'd be able to do something for her, as well. At least try. It would be different coming from you. It's almost as though – it's like she doesn't trust us, because she knows we care about her."

Elsie Hughes exhales. She looks from one face to the other. Anna's hopeful wide eyes and her fingers twisting careful around each other, from hesitance or nerves or that slight fear that comes from respect. Mr. Carson is no more soothing a picture, his body broken up into lights and darks, blacks and whites, his head bowed – sadness, perhaps, or maybe shame, maybe this is as close as he comes to begging – towards the floor. Damn them both.

That's the problem, isn't it? That she does care, about them anyway. And they look so sad, the two of them, with their matching tombstone faces, standing as still as the house's pulse. Damn them.

A sigh. Her hands come undone in her lap. "All right, I'll try. But only so that we can clean the house properly."

The fault of it all is that she knows they're right. And she knows, better than most, that a house can't run, not at its best, until all of their emotions are tucked away properly. It's a good housekeeper's job to put all the pieces in order, isn't it? This one has been sticking out, sharp and jagged, for months now.

She does it for the house, then, and nothing and nobody else. Like all things, she does it for the house.

iii.

This is how she expects to find Lady Mary: her spine sunk deep into her bedding, elbow arched and hand bent loosely against her brow, legs draped over the edge. The image of melodrama. Her sister used to adopt the pose, throat stiff with faked illness, when she was sick of chores or early mornings. It would be Elsie's obligation then, good sister that she was, to pull her down against the dawn-soaked floorboards by her ankles, to shake her bones until they were well enough to move again.

That is not how she finds her. She knocks politely on the Lady's door, which has turned grey and stiff from being sealed so shut. It swings open with a small push.

She scans all rooms in the same way, out of habit and training. Top to bottom, left to right, and so she sees the dust on the high corners of the ceiling first, the crooked painting second, and Lady Mary next to last, standing before her mirror, straight as an arrow. The windows are shut. Her dress is black, of course, and the housekeeper's mind does a quick tally of all the black dresses this house has bought over the years. The expense is sizable. Lady Mary inclines her head as an acknowledgement and the room is filled with waiting. Elsie finds she has nothing to say.

Silence is a servant's second language, and she steps through the room now as Mrs. Hughes. How many times have they been like this? Just the two of them in a room? She can barely think of one. The unfamiliarity is jarring. She knows every room as though it were a part of her body, could navigate it blindfolded if asked, and still there are surprises where there should be none. She goes to the window. Lady Mary says nothing.

Perhaps grief is the counterpoint to radiance. There's no light beneath Lady Mary's skin. She looks as though she is made of glass; in the darkness, she is pale. In a beautiful way, of course. When is the Lady anything else? She is pretty in the way a wilted rose is pretty, pretty in the way petals are when they fall, pressed and flat, from the pages of a book. She opens the window –a single, smooth motion, one that feels like running a hand over one's ribcage, stroking a wrist – and still Lady Mary is shadowed.

There are a few tents in the garden, pale canopies like fallen clouds and the dark outcroppings of servants wandering through purple flowers. She can see Anna ducking under a swath of white. Mr. Carson is wading through a flock of children.

"Do you know to walk backwards, M'lady?" She says. In her peripheral vision, she sees Mary's features narrow in confusion.

"Pardon?"

"It's just," Mr. Carson has shaken the last of the young lords and ladies off, "my sister used to do it very well. She'd walk backwards down hills and over fences. I always used to think she'd fall, but I don't think she ever did."

Elsie Hughes is not one to talk of the past. It never helps much, for one. Never anyone else's business, for another. Her business is the house's business, but the house's business is far from hers. And that, at least, is comfortable. She has barely mentioned her sister to Mr. Carson. Certainly, she has never told any of them much of her childhood. So this, then, is her peace offering. Less for Lady Mary – when has Mrs. Hughes been anything less than civil? – and more for herself. She is going to do this, whatever this is. She is going to try her best and reason with the consequences.

"No, we never did that," Lady Mary finally says, and Elsie turns to watch her reflection pronounce the words.

"No," she pulls her lips up into a smile and wills it not to look sad, "neither did I."

iv.

She doesn't know what Lady Mary is looking for in her mirror, but minutes pass and she doesn't find it.

"Where's George?"

"Lady Grantham took him outside with her, M'lady." Standing against the window, Elsie can see the arrangement of older women, their hats wider and more heavily flowered, small gardens blooming through the straw. Lady Grantham will be under the second tent, likely with the Dowager and Mrs. Crawley on either side, cooing over the child they struggle to fit in their arms. Not that she blames them. She's never felt much maternal instincts for small children. Mr. Carson has always been better with them, liked them more. So the question Lady Mary asks is more of a filler than a proper concern. Elsie has thought of a family of her own, of course. She has tried to understand these small questions, the pull of a mother to a son. She expects, at best, Mary worries over George in the same way she worries over her keys when they are not on her hip.

"I'm sure he'd like to see you down there too, M'lady," She says the words and has to swallow the grimace that wants to follow it. It's a silly sweet phrase. It's ridiculous and irrational. How can a babe want to see its mother? She supposes some might, but what does a child that young know?

"He's a baby. He doesn't care, not really."

"Your mother does though, M'lady, your grandmother, your family, they all do."

"I don't feel like going outside. Not now." The reflection of Lady Mary's eyes watch her for a long moment and Elsie doesn't look away. Mary runs a hand over the jewels around her neck, black and bright like stars, before sighing, moving to sit on her bed. Elsie stands.

"Who sent you up here? I know you aren't here out of your own inclinations. It wouldn't have been Papa, either. He wouldn't have known how to ask it of you."

Smile. Hold the breath, empty the throat.

"People have expressed their concerns, M'lady. They thought I would be preferred this time, I think."

"Well, they're half right," Mary adjusts the glove on her hand. Elsie wonders how many times a day she does this now, these empty little motions. It will never set on her arm perfectly, not the perfect she's thinking of, is what the housekeeper thinks of telling her. Perfect isn't the same anymore. "I am sick of them."

"They only have your best interests at heart, M'lady."

"Matthew wanted what was best for me as well. And he understood me. That's the problem – with Mama, with Papa, with all of them – they keep saying they know what's best for me, but I don't think they know me at all. Not anymore."

v.

"I feel as though there's something hollow in me. Or rotten. Have you ever felt that way?"

The hand over the keys hesitates, contemplates passing over her breast. Instinctively, the fingers consider miming that circular motion. Her life, she thinks, has become a ritual of circle after circle. Her fingers in the morning, her descent through the hallways and passages of the estate, dress as black as vulture's wings. It's all scanning and checking and scanning again.

It's weeding. It's looking for that rot.

Elsie Hughes says nothing.

But there must be something binding between familiar strangers, some strange, foreign trust. Or perhaps honesty is just preferably to another long silence. Perhaps Lady Mary doesn't even know she's here anymore. She's turned her head away, foggy eyes; her voice sounds like chipped glass.

"I feel cheated, that's the thing. What was the point of it all, if it was to end this way? Why did we bother? I've been cheated." Elsie thinks of damselflies, with small stained-glass wings. She could fit Lady Mary's words into them, the delicate little phrases. There's bitterness too, of course, but it's no longer cutting, just tired. Blunt.

"I was a good person," Mary finally says. "With him, I was a good person."

"And now I'm not. Now I can't be. They've taken that from me too."

It's too much, maybe. Here, the housekeeper slips. She scoffs.

"If you've been cheated, M'lady, I daresay I've been cheated of a grand estate and a few fortunes of my own."

Lady Mary's head snaps back to her quickly and Elsie supposes both their hearts clench. Lady Mary looks at her with her fractured china face and Elsie is sorry for speaking. She suspects too, for the first time, that Lady Mary is sorry too.

"I'm sorry, M'lady, I didn't mean –"

"It's all right. You did. I much prefer that you did." But there's a terrible tremble in her left wrist.

Elsie sighs again. She moves from the window now, stands hesitantly, as one might on a tightrope, across from the widow.

"If you don't mind me saying, M'lady, life hasn't cheated you out of anything. Life has simply been. It's not a fair world, but no one truly asks for it to be fair. You were born very lucky. You have grown into some unluckiness, but that doesn't mean life has robbed you of much of anything. It has been. And you have been. And now you have to be, because that's the only way through the mess."

She pulls that small smile again, finds it easier. "I don't ever feel cheated about my life, M'lady. I have been very fortunate since coming here. More than some, less than others. It doesn't matter, really, because I have lived my life to my own choices and that's all there is to be done."

"And you aren't making any choices now. You think you are, M'lady. You think black is a choice and you think sitting here is a choice, but it's not. It's avoiding the real choices. You didn't get to choose what happened to your husband, but you do get to choose what happens today. You get to choose what happens tomorrow. If I may, M'lady, I think it's silly to do anything else."

There's not a breath in Lady Mary's body. She sits very still, still enough for Elsie to watch that tremour, that sunbeam of movement, reflect through her skin. The way her mouth fights to stay still. Lady Mary's face fall apart in small fragments and the housekeeper looks away, because that's what a good servant does, sits next to her on the bed. They do not touch.

"I'm so angry at him," Mary says, her voice a small tremour itself. "I'm so angry at all of them."

"Then do something with that anger. Better than letting it stay inside you."

If Lady Mary's glove has slipped when it rose to cover her mouth, then it's no more imperfect than it was before.

"You'll find, M'lady, your world is wider than just one man. And your heart is bigger than just how you felt for him."

And if Lady Mary is crying against her shoulder, then it's just another open window in this darkened room.

vi.

They stand by the window, the two of them, for a long moment. Mary watches the shadows and colours move across the lawn and Elsie watches Mary watch them. It's strange to see the blood in the widow's face again.

"Oh, there's that awful one Mama invited last time," Mary will say from time to time as another man paces through the gardens. "He's a terrible bore."

She sees Anna speaking with Mr. Carson in a patch of sunlight. She thinks that Mr. Carson's eyes are looking straight to their window, but perhaps it's all a trick of the light. She feels for the keys on her hips. Exhales.

"Would you like me to help you change, M'lady?"

vii.

It's a dark purple, but it's a start. Elsie straightens two pillows before they leave the room and Mary fidgets with her cream glove. The pearls around her neck look lighter, and perhaps uncomfortable in their weightlessness.

She stays three steps behind Lady Mary when they walk down the hall.

It's when they reach the grand staircase that Lady Mary turns softly. There is sunlight dappled in strange patterns over the rails, cut outs of stone and glass and Lady Mary's own shadow, falling down the steps. Mary stares the housekeeper in the eyes, takes a single backwards step down. There's a halo of light around the Lady's head, and her mouth moves in something that maybe, just maybe, wants to be a smile.

"Well?" Mary says.

"I don't use these steps, M'lady."

"Nonsense. You do if I say you do. And it doesn't count, anyway, unless you do it forwards."

Elsie Hughes doesn't move.

"Besides, if I walk down these steps backwards on my own, I'll just look ridiculous. And if I'm to look ridiculous, Mrs. Hughes, I don't think I'd like to come out to the party after all."

Maybe, months from now, Elsie will smile at these words. For now, she obliges. It's her duty to. The house is still, but there's music coming from the garden and the light shakes as they walk, step and step, slowly. Maybe a lifetime passes as they take their steps together, Elsie isn't sure. They're suspended in the same motion and it feels like breathing. When they reach the bottom, Elsie can taste the lightning under her tongue.

They stand at the bottom for another moment then. The housekeeper keeps her eyes straight, won't turn until the other does, and the widow breathes once, maybe twice, gathering something that was not broken, only bent a bit.

It's a start. Or maybe it's an end. The important part is that it is.

viii.

They exit into the field together, never looking at each other once.

Mary walks as though the garden is one large, frozen winter. The people shiver away from her, puff out gasps and strings of gossip in foggy breaths. When Lady Grantham holds out her son, she takes him. She doesn't move like a shadow, Elsie realizes. She moves like she has one. It's a good change.

She circles through the yard before coming to stand next to Mr. Carson under some old crooked tree. The sunlight is lopsided over their heads, but everything else is in order, and she will have to compliment Anna, she supposes. But there's time in the day yet.

"Thank you," is what Mr. Carson says, as she settles, back straight, at his side.

"Well, life had to go on somehow."

"I do mean it –"

"I know you do. That's why you needn't say anything about it."

There are children roaring on the other side of the field. Some loose flowers have been shaken in the wind, fall around their feet like dust. She thinks of collecting them away in her palms, decides against it.

And she can see the entire yard from here. The wide-rimmed hats of ladies and the shadows of servants at their heels, some kaleidoscope of life, great as a proper living creature, stretching its limbs through all the garden paths, turning over in the sunlight. She smiles.

There's not a cat in sight.

* * *

_I originally put this on archivesofourown because I wanted some separation between certains fics and my other ff account. But I've decided this, whatever this is, can exist here as well. _


End file.
